Remembering the diehard communist who loved poetry

In West Bengal, the era of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M) to which Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee belonged ended with the defeat of the Left Front in 2011 and the spectacular triumph of Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress (TMC). His passing away, though, was another matter.

He took his last breath at home, exactly the way he wanted it, surrounded by his books, his photographs of Rabindranath Tagore, Karl Marx, Lenin, and prints of paintings. Bhattacharjee had consistently and stubbornly refused to be hospitalised even when party leaders and doctors pleaded with him. There were boundaries he drew, and fought to stop trespassers. 

When he quit being a minister, storming out of the Jyoti Basu-led government in 1993, dismayed by the distance separating his puritanical pursuit of politics and Basu’s pragmatism, he secreted himself in Nandan, a multiscreen film complex built during his tenure as minister of information and culture. 

During the time he was out of office, he wrote the play Duhsamay (bad times), a political hot potato; the CPI(M) could neither disown him, nor could it approve of his actions. The message was that he was inaccessible, except to a select few.

Bhattacharjee was open to some and distant to others, earning him the reputation of being arrogant. When I barged in, days after he quit, Bhattacharjee observed he had anticipated that I would. It was extraordinary how well he handled criticism, from those he approved. I told him that he had run away from the responsibility of being a leader. His reply was simple, I do not feel it right to be a minister.

Years after the 2011 election debacle, Bhattacharjee wrote his memoirs, Phire Dekha (looking back). The two-volume record is brief to the point of being cryptic. Dissatisfied by its brevity, I met him in the CPI(M)’s state headquarters at Alimuddin Street. Referring to several incidents that I felt were politically significant, I suggested he revise the text and add more details.

We argued over it. Exasperated, but not annoyed, Bhattacharjee told me, when I am gone, you can add the details. Disarmed I may have been, but that did not stop me from getting in the last word; I told him, its your job, your life, you need to tell it.

What Bhattacharjee had left out were his interactions with then home minister L.K. Advani during the Atal Behari Vajpayee government on the spread of terrorist networks within West Bengal through a chain of madrasas with links to Bangladesh, and funding that was also routed through Bangladesh.

He needed to explain why he had alerted Advani to what was going on in the districts bordering Bangladesh and in other parts of West Bengal where there were pockets of tight knit Muslim communities that could shelter these elements.

In typical Bhattacharjee fashion, he first declined and when I persisted, said the details of the interactions with Advani were confidential. After much argument, Bhattacharjee conceded that the fact of the interaction ought to be included in his chronicle. It turned out to be one sentence.

As chief minister, Bhattacharjee had information that terror networks were embedding themselves in West Bengal. For reasons of national security and to protect West Bengal from the potential destabilising impact of terrorist activities, Bhattacharjee took a call to inform Advani, sharing all the intelligence he had gathered.

His decision did not go down well with his party, which felt that being seen to cooperate with the BJP government on an issue that concerned the minority population in the state would be politically damaging. Having made up his mind, Bhattacharya knew what he had to do and why.

The tea-drinking, cigarette-smoking Bhattacharjee with his love of poetry and passion for politics was a diehard Marxist, a quintessential Bengali, and a fine patriot. His idealism was part of who he was, a bhadralok.